I was into Buddhism for several years. It most definitely points to some psychological truths: Self is a process, everything changes continuously, thoughts and feelings come and go, etc...

I was also into stoicism and read all the greats. It most definitely points to heuristic ethics necessary for the arbitrary nature and challenges of life.

However, it was the archetypal philosophy of Jung, Peterson, Moore, etc.. that wrapped it up nicely for me.

Buddhism teaches about how to be, stoicism teaches about how to be and how to act. Archetypal evolution shows one why.

It's a work in progress, but I like the continuity of these three areas of human study.

BTW, the biggest realization I've had in a while is how scientific materialism, for all its wonders, has provided zero insight into any of this. If you read what the greatest scientists believed 300 years ago (aether, alchemy, phlogiston, etc..) you'd laugh at their naiveté. However, schools of ethics and "psychology" dating back more than a millennium are as relevant today as ever.

BTW, the biggest realization I've had in a while is how scientific materialism, for all its wonders, has provided zero insight into any of this. If you read what the greatest scientists believed 300 years ago (aether, alchemy, phlogiston, etc..) you'd laugh at their naiveté. However, schools of ethics and "psychology" dating back more than a millennium are as relevant today as ever.

This is a pretty super-interesting book. I've read and re-read a number of sections from it.

Ok. I haven’t followed the literature. She kept referencing Plato’s essences so I felt she was stretching the rebelliousness of her view. Plus, listening to her on Robert Wright’s podcast she was digging her heels in about fear not being innate but it was just a semantic pissing match

It wasn't the constructed emotions part of the book that snagged me, so much as the discussion of the brain as a prediction machine, and reasoning for why (for example) there are more nerve pathways going to the sense organs than from them. We predict, then seek to confirm. This is necessary, because we actually live in the past (takes time for sensory input to get to awareness). Reminded me of how a bunch of pro baseball players flailed against a girl fast pitch softball pitcher. No known patterns to help their prediction.

The criticality of language is another, and how quickly human infants can learn that a symbol (odd sound) can represent an abstract thing. Ties in with Ralston's latest book I am reading, so good timing.

Bucket's realisation is spot on. Science has limits and cannot give answers to most important human questions. Everything in life has at least two sides, technical and romantic, as per definitions from the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Unfortunately, the romantic part has been largely ignored in the last decades.

Reductionism can take you only a short distance. It's fun to stick people in fMRI and watch the colours on the screen. But it is similar to slicing someone's heart in an attempt to find the anatomical basis for the broken heart. And so the brain and neuroscience can only explain a tiny part of personal reality. Dammit, we can't even be sure that color

Yet, major problems cannot be answered by science. Hell, most of them cannot be answered by words. Try define quality: you know it's there when you see it, but can you really define it? Can you explain the difference between good and bad literature? Between good and bad piece of music? That's the realm of philosophy, even though it will never give you the precise answer.